Seamus Technical Proposal

Technological advancements in the past two decades, especially those associated with digital communication, have changed the way people live, interact, work and learn. These changes have profoundly impacted the development of an individual's educational skills and social capacities. An e-learning system implemented as a client-server architecture enables students and individuals to study independently without the intervention of a teacher for high schools, universities, and companies. Individuals can learn anytime and anywhere as long as they have an internet connection. An e-learning system augments face-to-face instruction teaching. 

DrumBase Solutions works with enterprising businesses and industries to build and develop competitive business solutions by linking people to markets, information, and capital. DrumBase helps businesses, industries, and institutions grow by blending bespoke technical solutions with the latest technologies. DrumBase's greatest priority and commitment are with its customers, and the company always strives to add value to its customers. Today's information economy requires knowledgeable workers. As data continuously doubles and triples daily, there is a need for people to remain informed and up-to-date. DrumBase Solutions seeks to design and develop an e-learning management system for Seamus Company that can deliver service to more than 2,800 telecommuters throughout the state of Wisconsin or any geographical area. The e-learning system will allow managers, administrators, and employees at Seamus Company and educational institutions to monitor ongoing training, verify an individual's compliance with training and continuing education requirements as established by various institutions. 

Proposed Solution

DrumBase Solutions proposes the development of an adaptive e-learning platform for instruction teaching of both students and adults. Bradac and Walek (2017) define an adaptive system as a system that can adapt to changing user information and react to the appropriate change. The e-learning platform shall incorporate sensors to measure biological signals such as electroencephalography and electrocardiography (ECGs) to detect the student's feelings while learning and eye-tracking to measure their positive or negative reactions that will impact their learning within our platform. 

The following are high-level system requirements that articulate DrumBase Solutions' vision for the e-learning platform but are subject to change throughout the project's lifecycle, requirements gathering, design, and pilot phases. Kindly note that the features listed here are to guide the project's scope but are not considered all-inclusive. The e-learning system shall consist of the following modules: instructional design, learners, blended learning, instructors, biological sensors, and the evaluation of an individual's emotions. 

Instructional Design

The e-learning platform will allow content scoping by managers and administrators and evaluate target learner profiles to establish a baseline for online training and face-to-face interaction. The system will create modules and the presentation of content in various formats, such as infographics, animation, and videos (El-Masri & Tarhini, 2017) . Instructors will be able to design assessments, storyboards, guides and offer downloadable content. This content will be broken into learning modules intended for consumption on the web and mobile applications. 

Learners

Learners are the primary users of the system. They can register on the e-learning platform, be selected for or choose any course provided by the e-learning solution. 

Blended Learning

The e-learning platform will be aligned with the following core features of blended learning: 

Self-paced Learning: This module will allow learners to conduct self-paced learning, and they do not have to commute in order to acquire education (El-Masri & Tarhini, 2017) . Students will be able to develop their own learning journey so that they can interact with it at their convenience. 

Engagement and Recruitment: The system will allow the recruitment of learners through a selective and rigorous process in order to target the right participants. Payments shall be enabled through credit cards and mobile payment services such as Apple Pay or Samsung Pay (Uğur & Turan, 2018) . DrumBase Solutions will develop a platform that will engage end-users and create incentives for continued learning, such as gamification and accomplishment levels. 

Community and Social Learning: This module will allow learners, irrespective of their geographic location, to share their experiences through dynamic chat platforms, discussion boards, and uploading photos and videos to share their knowledge and find solutions to problems within a community of practice (Uğur & Turan, 2018) . 

Analytics and Monitoring: The system will automatically generate intelligent analytics and customized reports based on predetermined or custom values. This will include the ability to push communication through email, social media, and short message services (Uğur & Turan, 2018) . Instructors and administrators will be able to monitor learner journeys through alerts, dashboards, and reporting. 

Biological Sensors

ECGs and eye tracking will be incorporated into the platform to measure learner emotions. Eye-tracking will measure visual exploration patterns to understand the usability of interactive systems and evaluate the learner's experiences during contact (El-Masri & Tarhini, 2017) . This assessment will enable Seamus Company to evaluate how learners' emotions develop throughout the learning process so that the e-learning platform can be developed further to identify and respond to emotional variations. 

Analysis of Literature

Critical success factors have been linked to the adoption of e-learning systems by organizations and higher education institutions identified by Uğur and Turan (2018). The findings of their study revealed that firms and educational institutions are inclined to using e-learning platforms to improve their teaching efficacy. Also, their results indicate that an interactive system has a profound impact on the intention to use e-learning technologies, as they have a greater impact on performance expectancy. El-Masri and Tarhini (2017) found that an adaptive e-learning system results in engaged students that are emotionally, knowledgeably, and behaviorally involved in their education. The authors also note that emotions play an integral role during learning. Firstly, they influence learning and impact a learner's ability to process information and explicitly understand what they encounter. Secondly, learning how to manage emotions and relationships is referred to as emotional intelligence, making people successful. As a result, Truong (2016) asserts that tutors must cultivate positive emotions in learners to encourage optimal learning. Thus, how learners address feelings and feedback that develop during the learning process is critical to improving learning experiences. 

The Accomplishment of Goals, Supporting Objectives, and Deliverables

DrumBase Solutions will provide five resources to work on developing Seamus Company's e-learning platform. Also, DrumBase will give a lead developer to head the five resources and a project manager to interface communication and project deliverables between DrumBase Solutions and Seamus Company. 

Technology Stack

It is built on a Microsoft technology stack, which includes .NET Runtime and ASP.NET MVC. 

Designed for the cloud with Microsoft Azure making it easy to deploy, reliable, and scalable. 

Built on HTML5, CSS4, and Knockout.js, making it faster, responsive, cleaner, and more maintainable. 

It is built for cloud, web, mobile, and desktop. 

During implementation, DrumBase Solutions will provide training for the e-learning platforms to program and system administrators. This will include enrolling new users, migrating user data owned by Seamus Company from legacy systems, transferring user information and access, and the online registration process to enroll new users. 

Project Timeline

Sprint 0
Start Date	01-04-2021		Goal
End date	30-04-2021		Initial setup
Total Estimate in Hours	176
Application	Area		Task Name	Priority	Status		Estimate (Hrs)
Existing application	Infrastructure		System Analysis and Design				32
All Application	Infrastructure		Architecture design				35
All Application	Infrastructure		Database design				30
All Application	Infrastructure		Listing features				35
All Application	Infrastructure		Preparing Sprint plan				24
All Application	Infrastructure		knowledge transferring to juniors				20
Sprint 1
Start Date	03-05-2021	Goal
End date	14-05-2021	Completing wireframe
Total Estimate in Hours	64
Application	Area	Task Name	Priority	Status		Estimate (Hrs.)
Leaner System (Web)	Infrastructure	wireframes				16
Learner System (Mobile)	Infrastructure	wireframes				20
Vendor System (Web)	Infrastructure	wireframes				24
Admin Application (Web)	Infrastructure	wireframes				4
Sprint 2
Start Date	17-05-2021	Goal
End date	31-05-2021	Completing colour mock-up
Total Estimate in Hours	64
Application	Area	Task Name	Priority	Status		Estimate (Hrs.)
Instructor System (Web)	Infrastructure	Mock-up				20
Instructor System (Mobile)	Infrastructure	Mock-up				18
Vendor System (Web)	Infrastructure	Mock-up				18
Admin Application – Seamus (Web)	Infrastructure	Mock-up				8

Resources Required and Associated Costs 

Versions	Milestones	Description	Cost (%)
Version 1.0	Milestone 1	Advance to start the project	20%
	Milestone 2	Upon release of sprint 1	20%
	Milestone 3	Upon release of sprint 2	20%
	Milestone 4	Upon release of sprint 3	20%
	Milestone 5	Upon release of sprint 2	20%
	Total:		$48,600

Materials to be Provided by Seamus Company

Items to be Supplied	Due Date	Cost
Microsoft Azure	By mid of the project	We recommend the pay-as-you-go model.
Company Logo	On project kick-off

Resources

Resource	Cost
Project Manager	$15, 685
Lead Developer	$22, 600
5 Developers	$65 per hour (160hrs a month) = $52,000

Evaluation Framework

The project's success will be measured by the gross profit margin achieved by Seamus Company after one year of adoption. The higher the profit margin for the company, the better the company is doing to achieve its bottom line. 

The second measure of success is employee satisfaction which will be conducted through semi-structured questionnaires. The more satisfied an employee is, the more productive and efficient they will be in their work. 

References

Bradac, V., & Walek, B. (2017). A comprehensive adaptive system for e-learning of foreign languages. Expert Systems with Applications , 90 , 414-426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2017.08.019 

El-Masri, M., & Tarhini, A. (2017). Factors affecting the adoption of e-learning systems in Qatar and use: Extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2). Educational Technology Research and Development , 65 (3), 743-763. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-016-9508-8 

Truong, H. (2016). Integrating learning styles and adaptive e-learning system: Current developments, problems and opportunities. Computers in Human Behavior , 55 , 1185-1193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.02.014 

Uğur, N., & Turan, A. (2018). E-learning adoption of academicians: A proposal for an extended model. Behaviour & Information Technology , 37 (4), 393-405. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929x.2018.1437219